The Daily Tar Heel: Site to serve as source for leaks

The Wikipedia-inspired Wikileaks.org was created as an outlet for repressed dissidents in countries hostile toward open governments. It allows them to reveal unethical behavior through "untraceable mass document leaking and analysis," according to the Web site.

The site, by being solely user-driven and open in the same fashion as Wikipedia, can be used to reveal important documents, but ostensibly, it will be just as easy for bad-faith users to submit false documents or leak information that could create legitimate national security risks.

Wikileaks states that significant user scrutiny will allow users to determine the authenticity of documents.

Steve Levine, a UNC professor of Asian studies, is skeptical of how effective the site will be in countries like China.

"Chinese society tends to communicate through personal communication-it's safer. The Chinese government has a whole army of people cracking down on the Internet."

Levine cited the work of Columbia University political science professor Andrew Nathan as an example of the interpersonal connection Chinese whistle-blowers trust more than the Internet.

Nathan worked with anonymous sources to get secret Chinese government documents published in "The Tiananmen Papers" and "China's New Rulers." For anybody found to have posted on the site, the penalties could be severe.

Leakers also will have to operate in countries that actively urge companies to accept their censorship.

Google China capitulated to the Chinese government's demands and agreed to self-censor its search results last year.

Steven Aftergood, who runs the [[Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News blog, said Wikileaks must prove the quality of its product to gain the trust of potential users.

"They will have to develop a track record, and that may involve confrontations with a government," he said. "Only by emerging unscathed from that confrontation will they be able to prove that they can protect sources."

Kevin Hewison, director of the Carolina Asia Center, said he believes that the creation of the site can bring positive change to Southeast Asia.

He said the site is particularly promising for Thailand and Vietnam, where Internet access is more prevalent, but it doesn't rule out the possibility of Westerners using the technology to reveal unethical behavior by governments and corporations.

Aftergood said the creation of the Web site was significant.

"Transparency in many countries is so limited that any initiative like this has a chance of making a real difference."